Police probe child porn links found on Fernhurst pre-school website

POLICE are investigating after child porn links were discovered on a pre-school website.

The discovery was made by Observer reporter Amie Gordon who was researching contacts for an end of term event at Fernhurst Pre-School.

She found pornographic messages had been posted, together with apparent links to child porn websites.

The links and explicit messages were removed within hours.

A police spokesman said: “Police received a report the pre-school’s website has a link to child pornography. This is being investigated and the school has been made aware and told to remove the link.”

The pre-school is privately run and has broken up for the summer holiday. Neither headteacher Judy Holliday nor chairman of the management committee Louise Elder were available for comment, but the pre-school committee was contacted by officials and the obscene material has been removed.

A spokesman for West Sussex County Council said the matter would be passed to the relevant child protection agency.

Fernhurst pre-school parent Mike Whitehead said his son Tom, aged four, had just left to start school.

He was ‘appalled’ that anyone would do that to a pre-school website.

“I don’t go on the staff section very often because I know all the staff.”

He said his son had made many friends at the school: “The staff are brilliant.”

His daughter, he added, would be starting there in September.

Headmaster of Fernhurst Primary School which shares a site with the pre-school, Gary Parkes said: “The police contacted me this morning (Wednesday).

“The comments on the website are very inappropriate and of an explicit nature.

“The IT technician at our primary school thinks a random programme may have put the comments on the site. Clearly the security protection is not as good as it could have been.”

The offending material had been removed from the website yesterday afternoon (Wednesday, July 17) as police began investigations into whether the site had been hacked into, and by whom.